Worlds Apart
by vespertine dreams
Summary: When Connor and Becker return through an anomaly, they find themselves in a very different world. A.U. Connor/Becker mild slash. Minor spoilers for series 1/2/3. Reviews Welcome.
1. Blast from the Past

Ever wondered how different things would have been had Helen Cutter not gone over to the dark side and started meddling in the teams' lives?

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Worlds Apart

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1 – Blast from the past

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"I'll be so glad to get back home," Connor commented as he and Captain Becker grabbed the last of their things and headed for the anomaly.

Three anomalies had opened within a few hours of each other, stretching the team pretty thinly to cover them all. Connor wondered what the others had found; the one that he and Becker had been sent to investigate had been a waste of time. Nothing had come through and a search of the immediate area through the anomaly had come up with a few small animals that, whilst interesting in terms of scientific research, weren't much of a threat to anything. It had, however, taken them a good four hours of scrambling around the none-too-welcoming landscape to make this assessment.

"So, do you still want to go out tonight?" Becker asked.

Connor shook his head. "What I really want to do is go home and go to bed." He saw the smile pull at Becker's lips and laughed. "I _meant_ to get some sleep, but I could be persuaded otherwise."

Becker's smile grew wider and Connor could almost see him contemplating the possibilities. He snagged Connor's hand and pulled him close enough to press a kiss to his lips before letting go. Connor grinned; he liked the playful Becker that he had come to know in the long months they had been together. When he had first met the Special Forces Captain, he had thought him to be rather stand-offish, always keeping himself at a distance from the team he was protecting. Once he got to know him, however, Connor realised that it was all just a damn good act. The Becker that he now knew, and that he had let the others see to a lesser degree, was a lovely man with a wicked sense of humour.

They went back through the anomaly and headed for the car, the drive back to the ARC taking only a short time. As they arrived in the car park, Connor noticed that the others' cars were there, meaning that they were the last to return.

"Come on," Becker said as they parked up and went into the building. "The sooner we report to Lester, the sooner we can go home."

Connor shook his head. "I still have some bugs to fix in the anomaly detector before I can go. It should only take an hour or so."

"I'll wait, give you a little incentive to hurry," Becker told him.

They saw no one until they reached the detector room, where Lester was waiting. He looked impatient.

"Took you long enough; we expected you back hours ago. I assume you have a report for me?"

Nodding, the two of them followed Lester up to his office.

Ten minutes later, Connor sat at the keyboard at the anomaly detector, tapping away. He was completely focussed on what he was doing, so it took a moment to register when Becker, who had been sitting at the end of the desk, jumped to his feet. He had a gun in his hand, levelling it at someone who had just come into the room.

"What the bloody hell is she doing here?"

Connor got to his feet and backed up to stand behind Becker, watching as Helen Cutter came sauntering into the room like she had every right to be there. When she saw the gun, she stopped.

"Captain Becker, what in God's name do you think you are doing?" Lester snapped as he came hurrying back down from his office. "I order you to put down the weapon. NOW!"

Becker's aim didn't falter. "I can't do that, sir."

"Captain, I'm warning you…"

Connor looked around at Lester in disbelief. "Why aren't you arresting her?" he demanded. "She killed Nick!"

Lester frowned. "Nick? Connor, what are you rambling on about?"

"If I may," Helen began. Becker glared at her but indicated for her to carry on. "Nick is just fine; he's in his office, or he was a few minutes ago when I saw him last."

Connor shook his head. "No, I was with him when he died. You shot him and left him for dead."

Lester sighed dramatically. "This is ridiculous," he muttered before turning to the nearest person to him. "Go get him."

"Can I move now?" Helen asked. Becker clicked the safety off his gun. "Obviously not."

When Nick cutter came striding through the door, Connor was halfway across the room before he even realised his feet were moving.

"No, I saw you. You can't- I-"

Nick looked alarmed when Connor threw his arms around him and hugged him tightly but Connor couldn't stop himself. He felt his eyes filling with tears and blinked them away.

"I can't believe you're real."

Connor eventually let Nick go and swiped at his eyes before glancing back to Becker. The soldier had lowered the gun and Connor could see that his hand was shaking as he laid the weapon on the desk. He looked completely shell-shocked, a feeling that Connor could definitely identify with.

They had now attracted a crowd, all watching them with a mixture of curiosity and concern.

"If you two are having some kind of nervous breakdown," Lester told them, not looking remotely worried, "could you at least wait until I make sure you've signed the health and injury wavers? I really hate paperwork."

Abby glared at Lester as she came over to Connor. She took his hand in hers, her thumb stroking his wrist idly. The gesture made him just a little uncomfortable, something he would expect from Becker but not Abby. He jerked out of her grip.

"Are you OK, Conn?" she asked. "Maybe you should sit down for a minute."

Connor backed away from her to go to Becker, leaving Abby staring after him, a puzzled look in her eyes. He reached behind to take Becker's hand, the contact bringing back a tiny bit of sanity to his mind. At this point, Becker seemed to be the only one, apart from him, who was normal.

"Tell me I'm not imagining all this," he said.

Becker squeezed his hand. "You're not. Not unless I am as well."

That made him feel a bit better; at least he wasn't going crazy.

"OK, something's really wrong," he said to Lester, looking around at the faces of their colleagues. "We're not making this up, I swear."

Lester looked from one to the other of them, studying them for a long time before he seemed to decide that they were telling the truth.

"Perhaps we should discuss this in my office," Nick suggested. Lester nodded.

That seemed to be a good idea, if only to get away from the stares of those around them. Abby, Nick and Helen followed them to the office.

"Where's Danny and Jenny and Sarah?" Connor asked. "And what about Stephen? Did he…?"

A few minutes later, Danny came into the office, dressed in the black uniform of the soldiers. Connor frowned, then looked to the other new arrival. Although it was the same woman he had seen mere hours earlier, there was something just not quite right, something different.

"Jenny?"

Jenny Lewis frowned. "Are you alright, Connor? My name isn't Jenny, it's Claudia."

Connor remembered all of the stories about Claudia Brown that Professor Cutter used to tell him, saying how she had suddenly vanished one day and then Jenny Lewis had appeared, looking just like her. He had only half believed it before, knowing that the Professor did had been enough for him, but now Claudia was standing in front of him. It was eerie, seeing people you'd never met in the faces of people you'd known for years. This must have been how Nick had felt after Claudia vanished.

It was bad enough that Helen was there. Just looking at the woman made his blood boil, remembering all the things she had done to them, to Nick.

"I'm sorry, but please can she leave?"

Lester looked ready to argue but Helen stood and smiled at him. "It's fine. I don't want to upset him and my presence here obviously does."

Once she was gone, Connor looked around the team again. "Is Sarah here?"

Everyone frowned, unsure. "Who?" Nick asked.

"You know, Dr Sarah Page," Becker told him. "From the museum. She was there when that crocodile-thing…"

"…Pristichampsus," Connor supplied helpfully. He rolled his eyes at Becker. "Gee, it's good to know how much you listen when I tell you these things."

Becker sighed. "I listen," he protested before turning back to the others. "Dr Page joined the ARC just after that."

Nick shook his head. "I remember her, but she was never employed here."

They both took a moment to digest this. It was one thing to know that things had changed but another entirely when it meant that people were simply gone. Connor knew he had to ask his next question but he wasn't sure he really wanted to hear the answer.

"I need to know; where's Stephen?"

Nick shook his head. "I'm sorry, Connor, he died. Last year, stopping Leek from releasing the predators, remember?"

"But that was Helen who set that up," Connor pointed out.

"No, she was here, helping us to stop him."

Lester stopped them. "I think you should start at the beginning," he said. "Now, you came back through the anomaly and everything was normal, correct?"

Becker nodded. "Until we got back here."

He and Connor took turns explaining what they had done before arriving here, what they had found through the anomaly and up to the point where Becker had nearly shot Helen. It was beginning to sink in now, the seriousness of the situation. Somehow they had stepped out of the anomaly and into a parallel dimension or a mirror universe, Connor thought. Oh, maybe they didn't call it that, maybe there was a more scientific explanation but since his knowledge of parallel worlds had been garnered from watching Star Trek, he felt he could give himself a bit of leeway in the technical terms.

"You're the same, I think," he told Lester. "So is the ARC but, in our reality, Helen disappeared through the anomalies eight years ago and you only found her again recently."

Nick nodded. "That's right. When she realised that we were researching the anomalies too, she came back to help. She had gathered up a lot of knowledge and technology over the years; she's been a great help to the project."

"Well in our world," Becker informed him, "she's been using that technology to wage a war against you for years, since before I even joined the ARC."

Connor could see the understanding in Nick's face, the realisation of why they had reacted so strongly to her presence dawning on him.

"I think that's what changed," Connor said. "If she never went over to the dark side then a lot of the other stuff wouldn't have happened either, right? The question is, what the hell do we do now? This isn't right; we don't belong here."

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To be continued…


	2. Broken Dreams

Worlds Apart

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2 – Broken Dreams

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Nick stood up, glancing at his watch. "It's getting late; I think that we should continue this tomorrow," he suggested.

Lester agreed, heading out to his office, as Danny left as well. Abby turned to Connor.

"Are you ready to go?" she asked, holding out her hand to him.

Connor frowned. "Go where?"

"Home."

"With you? But I don't live with you any more, not since your brother came to stay. I've been staying with Lester."

Abby approached him slowly, with the care she would give when nearing a skittish animal.

"Connor, Jack's just crashing in the spare room," she told him. "You still live with me; you've lived with me for years, even before we got together."

Connor looked up sharply. "What do you mean 'together'?" Oh please don't say it, he thought, seeing the look on her face. He shook his head. "No, no, no. I'm with him," he said, shifting closer to Becker. "Me and you, we never…"

Nick and Claudia, still in the office, both froze as Abby looked between the two men. Connor could see her eyes glistening and her lower lip began to quiver slightly. As she wiped her eyes just before turning on her heel and running from the room, Connor saw the ring on her left hand.

"She was wearing an engagement ring, wasn't she?"

Claudia nodded. "You proposed to her three months ago."

Connor didn't think that this could get much worse. He felt awful, the look on Abby's face had made his heart sink. OK, so in this world they were more, but to him she was still his best friend, the girl he would do anything to protect from harm. Now, he was the cause of that harm. Unfortunately, there wasn't a lot he could do to fix it. He couldn't give her what she wanted, what she expected.

"Go and talk to her," Becker told him, giving him a nudge. "She needs you."

Connor nodded, seeing the surprise on Nick and Claudia's faces as Becker gave him a quick peck on the lips before he left.

Abby was sitting in the corner of the botanics lab, against the wall, half hidden by the plants, when he found her. She looked up when he walked in and he saw the dark smudges of mascara around her eyes.

"Abby? Can I come in?"

She shrugged her shoulders. "'Suppose so."

He went over to her and sat down, cross-legged, on the floor in front of her.

"I'm sorry," he said. "It didn't occur to me that things with you and me wouldn't be the same as they are back home."

Abby smiled sadly. "It wouldn't have changed anything, though."

"No, but you didn't need to find out like that, or in front of Nick and Jen- Claudia."

She looked at the ring on her hand and then back to Connor.

"I can't believe this is happening. We were happy. It took us so long for one of us to make the first move and we'd finally got it together," she said. "And then this happens. I can't believe you're gay. I mean, Connor, my Connor, isn't so why did you have to be?"

Connor reached out for her hand and she let him take it in his. "I can't change who I am, Abby."

"I know, and I didn't mean that to sound like I was blaming you."

They sat in silence under the leafy camouflage of the plants, letting the world pass them by. He really wished that he could just have a do-over on this day. Maybe if they had known what would happen, they could have looked out for signs that something was wrong before they stepped back out of the anomaly. Maybe if they hadn't gone through it in the first place…

"Do you love him?" she asked suddenly.

"Yeah, I do."

"And you're sure you're…?"

Connor laughed softly. "I'm sure, but trust me, Abbs, if I ever felt that way inclined, you would have been the first to know." He expression turned serious once more. "You're my best mate, Abby. I know that's not what you want to hear right now, but you are the one person in the world that I would trust with my life and I do love you."

"Just not in the same way you love Becker," she finished. "Tell me, something- if you and he are a couple, why do you still call him 'Becker'?"

"What can I say?" Connor replied with a grin. "He likes me to."

Abby sighed, letting him wipe away the smudged mascara with a tissue before giving her a hug.

"Come on," he said. "We should go back."

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Connor helped Becker clear the dishes away after dinner that evening, unable to get the situation back at the ARC out of his head. After his talk with Abby he'd realised just how many things could have changed here; he'd assumed it was just the events that Helen had instigated but how would that have affected them? The fact that he was with Becker and not Abby was nothing to do with Helen Cutter.

"Just leave it," Becker told him. "You're going to drive yourself crazy trying to get your head around this whole mess."

Connor sighed and let himself be pulled into Becker's arms. "I know, but I just feel so bad about Abby. She just looked so upset."

"Conn, love, you have no control over this, nor do I, and so you can't hold yourself responsible." He smiled, releasing Connor from his embrace and took his hand. "We can figure this out tomorrow. In the meantime, bed."

As Becker took Connor's mouth in a gentle kiss a few minutes later, Connor had to agree that bed had been a good idea. In bed, with a warm, naked Becker at his side, all of those things he'd been worrying over seemed so much better.

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It was with a great deal of reluctance that Connor actually returned to the ARC the following morning, but Becker had refused to take no for an answer. As he argued, if they wanted to get to the bottom of this and possibly find a way to fix it, they needed the others' help. So, Connor followed him into the ARC, heading for his office. It was still early and so the team weren't in yet, but most of Becker's security guys were. They were just going in when someone called out to them and they turned to see Danny jog down the corridor to join them.

"Morning, Boss. Connor."

Becker frowned. "What are you doing in that gear?" he asked, indicating to the black combats that Danny was wearing.

"What do you mean? It's uniform."

Danny followed them into Connor's office and stood resting against the edge of the desk.

"What you were saying yesterday," he began, "about everything being wrong- am I different? Only you keep looking at me strangely."

"Sorry," Becker said. "It's just seeing you in that uniform. Back home, you're in charge of the Anomaly team instead of…"

"I'm your second in command, have been for the past six months," he told Becker. Danny looked thoughtfully at Connor and smiled. "In charge of your guys, eh? Neat."

Connor nodded. "You were brought in after Nick…" He stopped, unwilling to finish that thought. "The point is that with Nick still there, there wasn't a vacancy and so there was no need to hire anyone else. Were you still with the police when we met you? We met you when we were investigating an old house where these creatures were living. Everyone thought it was haunted and you arrested me for trespassing there."

Danny nodded. "That's right. Lester took me on a few weeks after that, after I quit the force."

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To be continued…


	3. Friend or Foe

Worlds Apart

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3 – Friend or Foe

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Danny left about an hour later, heading off to the armoury. In Becker's absence- Lester had insisted that he not be on active duty, at least until they sorted this out –he was in charge of the men and the security. Unfortunately, Nick and Abby were out on an errand, leaving them with Helen. It wasn't the most comfortable atmosphere to work in but Becker had to admit that she was making an effort. She was trying to engage them in conversation, to tell them about some of the technology at the ARC, but Connor still wasn't buying it.

"She's trying, Conn," Becker said. "Maybe we should give her a chance."

Connor turned on him. "It's easy for you; you've only met her a few times. She has been screwing up the rest of our lives for years. She killed Nick and she might as well have killed Stephen. I don't trust her."

"But she's not the same person here. Look, you don't have to trust her, just talk to her," Becker persuaded. "Please. If we're going to be stuck here for a while, we're going to have to accept that she's here to stay."

It took Connor until that afternoon before he finally worked up the nerve to speak to her, and even then it wasn't without Becker at his side. No way was he going anywhere alone with her, not even to sit in the break room and talk.

"Thank you for this, Connor," Helen said, watching as he sat down as far from her as possible. "I understand that this is difficult for you-"

"Don't," he snapped. "You don't understand anything about it."

After a warning nudge from Becker, he looked up at her again. He was so used to her being the manipulative, cold hearted bitch that he had known for years that the hurt in her eyes shocked him. Back home, he would have assumed that it was a trick, a lure so that she could spring her trap on them but here he wasn't so sure. Had it been a trick, she wouldn't have bothered trying to hide it.

"Nick told me what you said yesterday, about me. Or rather, about the me that you know." She laughed softly. "That made a lot more sense in my head." Her expression turning serious again, she said, "Despite what you think, I'm not her. For one, I would never hurt Nick."

As Connor fell silent, Becker gripped his hand reassuringly. He had seen how Cutter's death had affected Connor and he never wanted to see that despair back on his boyfriend's face again.

"You and Nick, are you still married?"

This time, Helen's laugh was genuine. "Oh, heavens no; we've been divorced for nearly a year. Well, I suppose that it's been longer than that, since everyone assumed I was dead. No, Nick and I realised a long time ago that while we may make a good team when it comes to academics, we were clearly not ever meant to be together in any other way. Besides, I think that Claudia would have something to say about it."

"Why?"

Helen frowned. "Didn't they tell you? Nick and Claudia have been married for six months now."

"And you don't mind?" Connor asked. "Nick always said that you'd done something to get rid of her the first time. He never knew how, but he knew you'd had something to do with it."

"How do you mean, get rid of her?"

It was getting harder and harder for Connor to see her as the woman he'd hated for years in the person sitting before him. Maybe this was what she had been like before she discovered the anomalies, back when Nick had married her. He'd always wondered how someone like Nick could have ended up with a nightmare like Helen.

"There was an anomaly," he told her. "They took a cage full of baby future predators through and something went wrong. The mother came back and it killed everyone but you and Nick."

Helen nodded. "I remember that; the mother attacked us, taking out the soldiers like they were toys."

"Well, he said that when you got back, something had changed. Claudia had been there only now, none of us knew her. We'd never heard of her; she had just vanished from existence," he said. "Then, a few weeks later, Jenny Lewis started work at the ARC. Nick swore that she was Claudia and, now that I've seen Claudia, I can see it. They're identical." He studied her for a moment. "It really doesn't bother you that she's with Nick?"

"Honestly, no. As I said, we work well together but we get along much better as friends."

After telling them her side of events, of her time at the ARC, Helen offered to show them some of the technological advances that had come from the future technology she had collected through the anomalies. Although she had tried before, Connor hadn't really been paying attention at the time. He had been more fixated on the fact that it was Helen before him, bane of their existence.

Now, Becker watched as Connor's eyes lit up as he checked out the gadgets. It was good to see him back to the enthusiastic young man he usually was, something Becker had been missing in him since this whole mess had begun.

By the time that Nick and Abby returned, Connor was talking avidly with Helen about the palm held device they used to reopen closed anomalies. He had seen her use it once, although he hadn't known it was her at the time, and even then it had fascinated him. Just imagine how brilliant it would be if he could build one of those? There had been any number of times when the anomalies had closed before they had chance to send the creatures back through. The holding pens at the ARC housed those creatures that had been left behind as they waited for another anomaly to open to the right time period.

A sudden thought struck him. "You use this to reopen anomalies to put the creatures back?" Helen nodded. "What about Rex? And Sid and Nancy? Please tell me that they're still here?"

She frowned and then shook her head once he'd explained what the creatures were. "Abby has Rex, but only because they didn't have the re-opener then. After that, we made sure that nothing got stranded."

Connor's face fell, his enthusiasm gone again. Becker watched as the younger man sat down heavily in the chair behind him, looking miserable; he knew how much Connor adored those pesky little Diictadons.

"It still seems odd to see you two together," Helen observed. "Ever since I joined, it's been Connor and Abby, always together. Sorry- that was a little insensitive."

There was a sound from the doorway and Becker looked up to see Nick saunter in. He just caught sight of Abby fleeing when she saw them.

"She's taking it kinda hard," Nick informed him. "She just needs her space for a while. What's wrong?"

"Sid and Nancy are gone," Connor said, letting Becker explain.

It seemed so ridiculous to be getting upset at the fact that they weren't in this world, but they were his pets. He'd had enough of this place. He missed Sarah and Jenny being here. He missed having Danny to talk to, as here they didn't really seem to be friends. He wanted that easy friendship that he had with Abby, not the tense shadow of it that they had here at present.

"I want to go home," he said. Even if it meant losing Nick again. He had already grieved for his former professor, accepted that he was gone, and now seeing him again brought those memories back.

Nick and Helen left the room, giving them a moment, and Becker gently turned Connor to face him, looking him straight in the eye.

"We'll get back," he promised. "With all of the technology here, we'll figure out what went wrong and we'll fix it. There has to be a way."

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Four months later…

"I can't do it," Connor said, looking at the anomaly in front of him. They were back where they started from and ahead of them, on the other side of that anomaly, was home. Or at least, a version of home. They were only guessing that it was the one they had been fighting to return to.

"We have to," Becker pointed out. "We can't stay here."

"But if we go through, and it is home, then I have to lose Nick all over again. I've got used to having him there again. If it's not home, if it's the other world again, then everyone else is wrong."

They had no choice, though. As Becker had said, they couldn't stay here for ever more. They had to get back. Besides, who knew if they were the only ones. They had already wondered on numerous occasions if the Connor and Becker who were meant to be in the alternate world were actually in theirs. Maybe if they didn't return home, then none of them could.

"Come on, Conn," he said, holding out his hand. "Let's do this."

Connor took a deep breath and followed Becker through the anomaly. It seemed normal enough, just like the first time they had come to investigate it, only this time, on the other side, there were two black four-by-fours pulling up nearby.

"We're home," Becker said in relief, seeing Sarah get out of the nearest car, followed by Danny in his jeans and leather jacket. He'd never been more glad to see Danny's scruffy jeans in his life.

Abby came running over to them, just a few paces ahead of the others.

"Where the hell have you been?" she demanded, giving Connor a hug. When he pushed her away, looking startled, and moved closer to Becker's side, she frowned. "What's wrong?"

Becker looked at Connor, seeing the question there. He was ninety percent sure that this was _their_ Abby, and that this was home, but he had to be sure.

"This is going to sound really weird, but I have to ask," he said. "Where's Helen?"

Danny looked at him like he'd just grown a second head. "With any luck, getting herself eaten by a Tyrannosaur," he replied.

"So she doesn't work at the ARC?"

"Did you get a knock on the head or something?" Abby asked, eyeing him, concerned. "You're starting to worry me."

Connor smiled. "We're fine," he assured her. "But you're not going to believe where we've been…"

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End.


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